“Tendency of hating mathematics”

NTA member in Japan                            
Math teacher in Junior High School


I am teaching mathematics in junior high school and unfortunately 70% of my students show their tendency of disliking this subject. They are not sure why they hate it so much, but I can assume their reasons: it is probably this subject is too difficult for them, not attracted at all, and more importantly they cannot find the meaning in it saying “is this subject really useful for our future?”
 As for teacher myself, the text is not interesting at all. In there, I do not find any parts where students are encouraged to use their intelligence. For instance, there is a section on entitled “let’s think”; however, you can find the answers right below the questions! How can they think and enjoy reaching the answers. So, I am always trying my best to prepare for original questions and some additional materials so that my students might undergo a joy and satisfaction in solving questions.
 In my class, I also encourage my students to help one another when they work on some in-class exercise. For example, I always go check their answers of those who do well in class, and if their answers are correct, I ask them to help other classmates who are in need by moving around. Of course, instructing young students to meet the goal is not that easy, but I can see my students start to care for his or her classmates a little by little. I think this progress made out of my students is very important.
 Here, I would like to illustrate one episode in my class. One day, we were working on calculation of equation. My students were complaining this and that as usual in doing the exercises because I gave this assignment every time. But, I found it interesting that although the students are tired of working on the similar questions over and over, yet they showed their pleasure screaming “it was not that difficult!”, or “yes, I made it!” after answering the questions. I was very pleased to see their big smiles.